After driving seven hours from Foley, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia, I arrived at Woodruff Park in downtown Atlanta on Friday, October 7, 2011, the first official day of what promised to be a long-term commitment towards real change that couldn't be captured in a simple slogan. Bedraggled, exhausted and feeling a little funky, I absorbed the energy around me of people with a purpose, who for the first time in their lives, felt compelled to actively transform the world around them. It was exciting, like nothing I'd ever seen before, and I was proud to be witness to it.
So I camped out in the park in the cold on the hard grass with my favorite person on the planet, my dog Bug, a hybrid of a Boston Terrier and a Pug. Life was good and things were going well. The Atlanta police were mostly uninterested in what those "dirty hippies" were doing in the park, and the park maintenance people were unconcerned and supportive. Same thing on Saturday as we worked together to get organized and form teams with a common purpose.
And then it was Sunday. As I did the day before, I woke up, gathered my stuff and went in search of coffee. McDonald's is adjacent to the park and was the only place I knew to be open that early on a Sunday, because for a large city, the downtown Atlanta area is ridiculously bereft of accommodations on the weekends. So McDonald's it was. I ordered coffee and for the hell of it, some eggs, thinking protein would probably be a good thing for the busy day ahead. Occupy Atlanta has a headquarters in a building a couple of blocks down from the McDonald's and I used the bathroom there the day before, but I naively, and stupidly I might add, thought just using the bathroom at McDonald's to wash up and change clothes would be easier and more convenient so I could get back to the park sooner.
So I used the McDonald's bathroom, unaware of the shit-storm it would create or McDonald's and the Atlanta police's attitude towards the homeless. Before I went into the bathroom, I noticed a sign on the wall that said it was for customers only and customers could be in there for no more than thirty minutes. Great! I was a customer and I only needed ten. I went in and pulled out my stuff from my bag and as soon as I started brushing my teeth an employee pushed the door open. I should probably mention it was a small, one person at a time bathroom with no lock on the door. At that point, I didn't really care if a stranger saw me naked. I just wanted to get what I needed done and get back to the park, so I wasn't overly concerned about the door not having a lock on it, though it should have been my first clue to what was coming next.
Realizing the bathroom was occupied, the employee apologized and shut the door, as any decent person would do of course, and I went about my business. And then came the knocking and yelling from the manager. When she tried to push the door open, I pushed it closed and informed her I was in there. Instead of apologizing like the other employee, this only enraged her more, and she started knocking and yelling even louder, and then she told me I was "disrespecting the establishment," I kid you not, and she was calling the police. She attempted to push the door open a few more times, so instead of getting dressed and out of there, I was wasting time just trying to keep her from invading my privacy. Finally, I told her I could leave a lot faster if she'd quit trying to push her way into the bathroom and let me get dressed. If it hadn't been so insane, it would have been funny.
So I got dressed, gathered my stuff and left McDonald's without incident and thought that was the end of it. I walked over to the bus stop next door to speak to one of the ambassadors Atlanta has stationed around downtown, and asked him where the closest pharmacy was because I had a massive headache. We talked for a few minutes about nothing being opened on a Sunday morning, the weather, etc... and then I moved on to go back to the park. I was almost to the other side of the street when the police officer started yelling for me. "Hey you!" was apparently my name. After I heard it a third time, I turned around to see what was going on and the bat shit crazy manager of McDonald's was standing beside two police officers and pointing at me. I heard her say, "That's her," and the police officer motioned me over to him. As soon as I got to him, he yelled at me and ordered me to put my bags "over there," which was a newspaper stand. By this point, the manager of McDonald's had gone back to work.
Still yelling at me like I'd just robbed a bank, this police officer demanded my identification. Now being from the most racist state in the country that had just passed a draconian immigration law, with Georgia not far behind, I've started carrying my passport everywhere. So I pulled it out. Did you know that in the backwards ass states of Alabama and Georgia, a United States passport is a useless form of identification now? I didn't either until recently. In these states, you basically have no rights unless you have a state-issued I.D. And what are the chances of a homeless person having a state-issued I.D.? Exactly. And did you know that those little plastic windows in a wallet make it virtually impossible to pull your driver's license out when asked? Thus, my reason for simply handing him my passport instead. He forced me to give him my state-issued I.D. anyway and got angry with me because I couldn't give it to him fast enough, even though he was watching me struggle with it.
At some point I got tired of the way he was talking to me and the fact I hadn't done anything wrong, much less illegal, so I told him I was cooperating and it wasn't necessary for him to use that tone or attitude with me. Probably wasn't the smartest thing to say, but fuck, I'd had enough, I had a headache, this was a waste of my time, not to mention the police's time, and the police officer was being an ass. The only exact words I can remember saying were, "Can I go now, because this is a waste of all of our time." He didn't appreciate it and detained me for twenty minutes while he called in my personal information to check my background to see if there was something other than what he was detaining me for that he could use to arrest me. Meanwhile, the other officer told me to quit fidgeting and mocked me for crying. Newsflash to the police, when an innocent person is detained and treated like a criminal, publicly humiliated in a place of business and on the sidewalk of a busy street, and yelled at twice by two different people, it's traumatic and unnerving... and I was seriously jonesing for a cigarette.
Being a paying customer using the bathroom at a place of business isn't against the law. I didn't vandalize anything, nor did I disturb or inconvenience any other customers. The only person causing a disturbance and making a scene in McDonald's was the manager herself. In a normal world, the police would have laughed it off and sent me on my way after seeing the McDonald's coffee and bag in my hand and asking me a few questions, but we no longer live in a world of reason or rational thought, and law enforcement now functions on a power trip.
The police finally let me go when they couldn't come up with another reason to hold me there, but not before the same officer told me three times I was banned from that McDonald's and not to go in there again. Fine by me. After the way I was treated by the manager, and after I realized this wasn't really about me or the fact I was a paying customer who used the McDonald's bathroom, and after I realized this was all about the Atlanta police and McDonald's complete disdain for the homeless, of which they thought I was a part, the thought of going into any McDonald's, much less eating the food, turns my stomach. For my first time in downtown Atlanta, my experience away from the Occupy Atlanta movement itself didn't exactly fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling, and I'm not sure I'll ever visit the city again.
Though I could have legally refused to provide my I.D., and though I could have legally simply given the police my name and birthday, and though I could have legally refused to answer any questions and even refused to speak without a lawyer present, especially when what they were detaining me for wasn't even illegal, apparently in the new police state, those police officers could have still arrested me, booked me and thrown me in jail for exercising those rights. In this new police state in which we find ourselves, an out of control manager of a business establishment can now have someone detained by police just because she wants them to be, and the recipient of her wrath is deemed guilty until proven innocent. And in this new police state in which we now live, a homeless person is given no respect and treated without even the smallest amount of dignity, and can be carted off to jail just because the manager of a business establishment is having a bad day. It's despicable, and I'm grateful I got to experience it first hand so I could talk about it and shed light on an appalling problem in this country.
In an act of defiance, albeit in solidarity with social justice, the Occupy Atlanta movement has re-named Woodruff Park and is now calling it Troy Davis Park, and will be marching to the homeless shelter at Peachtree Street and Pine Street at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, October 14, 2011 to show support for the 99% among us who are the most in need. For those who keep asking "What do they want? What is their message?" This. This is what we want. This is our message. Recognition, respect, dignity, and most of all social justice for the 99% of Americans who have been left behind by an irresponsible and, as of yet, unaccountable financial industry and government entity that has failed us.
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Follow Melissa Webster on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@melissaswebste
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-webster/homeless-for-a-day-at-occ_b_1009939.html
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